One of my CS modules in final year was "Software Maintenance". For the coursework, we were given the department's exam results tracking software, which was written in Perl, and asked to plan how we would improve performance and add some new features.
IIRC, I think my group recommended rewriting it from scratch in either Java or C#, and I think we got full marks...
If I'd studied for three years, I'd have received a bachelor's degree (BEng).
Instead, from the start I said I'd study for four years, and receive a master's degree (MEng). The course was structured slightly differently, but it was pretty close to doing the bachelor's followed by the master's. The difference is the government subsidised all four years -- they only fund the first degree, so doing 3+1 means you have to pay for the master's yourself.
It probably makes less difference now, as the fees have gone up eight-fold in the 10 years since I enrolled.
The shortage is artificial - the jobs are written such as to take advantage of foreign workers and not hire many of the plentiful in-country ones.
This is unlikely to be the problem in the UK -- it's no different to employ a British person than a Portugese, Polish or Bulgarian one.
I think it's the pay. I went to Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, and was disappointed to see how many of my peers went to work in a bank or in finance. (roughly 15%). And those should be some of that year's best engineering/science graduates.
It might be fine for Japanese culture... I don't know. But it sure as hell wouldn't fly here. As soon as I found out those were required I'd be out the door.
It's probably not a problem in your field -- highly skilled people (e.g. software developers) are probably too valuable to have this forced upon them.
But there are plenty of less-highly skilled office workers: receptionists, secretaries, etc.
So, it's still worth making a stand against this kind of thing -- I don't think anyone should have to wear this kind of device at work.
As for London being healthier, don't make me laugh. Most of the air pollution comes from diesel vehicles, and those are precisely the ones (e.g. taxis, buses and lorries) which continue to drive in the city. If there's been any reduction, it's due to better engines, not 'we made congestion' tax.
London is much better than it used to be. London now has the world's largest fleet of hybrid buses, there's a massive charge for brining an old diesel lorry into the LEZ, but unfortunately nothing has changed regarding taxis, and they're by far the worst offender (especially as they drive round or idle while empty for a good portion of their time).
This will, of course, increase profits, but not reduce your bill.
Haven't you seen prices go down? The cheapest phone+broadband deal in the UK seems to be £10.50/month. I'm sure both the phone line and the dial-up access each used to cost more than that.
It's not a perfect market -- the cheapest phone-only deal seems to cost about the same. It's also not that easy to compare prices, when every company seems to offer it's own kind of deal. But there's lots of advertising trying to get people to switch.
I agree with your point about it being Anglo-centric.
Did you look at the list? The first one is in Arabic: (Just a redirect.), http:///./ probably won't work on Slashdot, so try http://xn--ggbla1c4e.xn--ngbc5... instead..VERSICHERUNG is for the "German speaking insurance industry",.BERLIN is obvious, and there's a few in Russian, Chinese and Japanese.
Even now, if you have a domain name that's perfectly descriptive - say you're a business in Zambia - you're going to have more initial success with tompopcorn.com than you would with tompopcorn.co.zm , as people don't recognize '.zm'. See other comments about people ignoring the new TLDs the same way they would ignore a.cx domain (granted, part of that might be experience with some of the shadier sites that tend to choose.cx,.tk, etc.).
I don't know much about Zambia, but I'm sure Zambians recognise.zm. Only having a CCTLD is no barrier in most countries, or their neighbouring countries, which is what most businesses focus on. Search for.CX websites and there are plenty based on Christmas Island.
If I've forgotten the domain, I often guess.uk (.co.uk,.org.uk) as it's more likely to take me straight to the British website of a multinational, and less likely to take me to an identically-named company elsewhere in the Anglosphere.
Only if there's nothing else on the road. In China you also need driverless bikes, otherwise cars will still need to warn people (or ask them to get out of the way).
In Florence, some sort of regulation prevents most vehicles from driving round the narrow city-centre streets. The taxis, which were mostly electric or hybrid, had beepers, roughly as loud as a bicycle bell, to alert people or ask people to move. Much nicer than honking a horn.
Trains in Britain have two tones. They're usually used together (daa-DAA), but sometimes I hear just the quieter one (I live near a busy line). I think the quieter one is only if the train is going slowly, perhaps to warn people maintaining the track. The two-tone sound is very distinctive -- I assume the frequencies are strictly regulated.
There's an entire series of videos of British train horns: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... I'm not sure whether to be surprised or amused.
(Which can't compete with the noise of an American train, which seems like it could wake up half a city.)
I hope you get paid a lot more than me, because I got pretty annoyed today that I ended up working four hours too many this week, and will have to make it up next week (I wanted to take this afternoon off, to make up for staying late because I was concentrating on Tuesday, but someone scheduled a meeting).
I'm supposed to be present between 10-12 and 14-15:30, work 36 hours a week, with no more than 8 hours under/over at the end of every month, and can take a day / am / pm off with permission a certain number of times per month. That's proper flexitime:D
I spend (36 - meetings etc) hours a week writing code, so I generally prefer not to develop software at home. But, occasionally it's satisfying to spend a rainy Sunday evening fiddling with something. I've noticed I'm much more likely to do this if I've had a lot of meetings in the preceeding week, or have recently returned from a holiday.
I do have a Github account (mostly little things I've forked), and the little green chart says I've committed changes on 12 days in the last 12 months.
It was an option on the desktop browser, there was a small button in the status bar. It occasionally popped up a prompt asking if I wanted to enable it (e.g. if I was using crap public wifi).
I used it on Linux until last week, when I switched to Firefox.
I've still not got enough extensions set up, but Facebook and Google Mail now work 100% of the time. Under Opera 12, I was down to about 80% of the time -- I think Facebook and Google stopped testing a few months ago.
Another domain of no interest to visitors, only scientists (and hobbyists, probably): 52k visits, 33% Chrome, 33% Firefox, 24% IE, 7% Safari, 2% Opera(!), 1% Android 85% Windows, 10% Mac, 2% iOS, 1% Linux (the site isn't very nice on a mobile, we don't think many people want to look at tables of data on a tiny screen).
Last time I visited the Science Museum there were steam engines running. That was less than a year ago, but I don't think they run every day -- perhaps only at weekends.
The shipping gallery is available online: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.u... -- I don't know what is now in that location (or if it's ready yet). It's certainly not a gift shop, as that's on a different floor.
(The museum is free, funded from tax and donations. The Deparment for Culture, Media and Sport is facing big cuts from the current government, and all the tax-funded museums are being told to cut costs as much as they can, and generate as much income as they can. I don't like this, but there's not much I can do about it.)
Exactly. My dad took me to model railway club for about a year. I didn't enjoy it much (I went because my mum said I had to choose one hobby to share with my dad, and the alternatives were worse). The interest I had in the model railway was the electronics. I would have liked to make a real signalling system, or automate the trains (which is a straightforward extension). However, the old men weren't interested, so the activity was mostly being bored while my dad drank beer and chatted about trains.
Nowadays, with the Internet, and with something like an Arduino or Raspberry Pi, I'd have been able to do something.
I just bought some food by credit card, and the receipt says: Visa Credit £6.34 [ICC] **** **** **** 3435 AID: A0000000013039 PAN SEQUENCE: 03 MERCHANT: **41872 AUTH CODE: 146972
PIN Verified
I have a smart card reader for validating online banking transactions, I think the administration and transport costs were probably more than the cost of the reader -- the bank sent it for free. The card has NFC, for low-value transactions (under £20, I think) I can pay contactlessly without a PIN. London is trialling accepting this for train/underground travel, it's already accepted for buses.
My card still has a magnetic strip, but I don't think it's ever been used.
Slashdot Mirror
One of my CS modules in final year was "Software Maintenance". For the coursework, we were given the department's exam results tracking software, which was written in Perl, and asked to plan how we would improve performance and add some new features.
IIRC, I think my group recommended rewriting it from scratch in either Java or C#, and I think we got full marks...
I'm sure the UK's popular culture is not pro-science, but isn't that true everywhere?
No -- not somewhere like China, south-east Asia, etc.
If I'd studied for three years, I'd have received a bachelor's degree (BEng).
Instead, from the start I said I'd study for four years, and receive a master's degree (MEng). The course was structured slightly differently, but it was pretty close to doing the bachelor's followed by the master's. The difference is the government subsidised all four years -- they only fund the first degree, so doing 3+1 means you have to pay for the master's yourself.
It probably makes less difference now, as the fees have gone up eight-fold in the 10 years since I enrolled.
The shortage is artificial - the jobs are written such as to take advantage of foreign workers and not hire many of the plentiful in-country ones.
This is unlikely to be the problem in the UK -- it's no different to employ a British person than a Portugese, Polish or Bulgarian one.
I think it's the pay. I went to Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, and was disappointed to see how many of my peers went to work in a bank or in finance. (roughly 15%). And those should be some of that year's best engineering/science graduates.
It might be fine for Japanese culture... I don't know. But it sure as hell wouldn't fly here. As soon as I found out those were required I'd be out the door.
It's probably not a problem in your field -- highly skilled people (e.g. software developers) are probably too valuable to have this forced upon them.
But there are plenty of less-highly skilled office workers: receptionists, secretaries, etc.
So, it's still worth making a stand against this kind of thing -- I don't think anyone should have to wear this kind of device at work.
As for London being healthier, don't make me laugh. Most of the air pollution comes from diesel vehicles, and those are precisely the ones (e.g. taxis, buses and lorries) which continue to drive in the city. If there's been any reduction, it's due to better engines, not 'we made congestion' tax.
London is much better than it used to be. London now has the world's largest fleet of hybrid buses, there's a massive charge for brining an old diesel lorry into the LEZ, but unfortunately nothing has changed regarding taxis, and they're by far the worst offender (especially as they drive round or idle while empty for a good portion of their time).
I meant there are plenty relative to the size of the territory. See https://www.google.co.uk/searc...
This will, of course, increase profits, but not reduce your bill.
Haven't you seen prices go down? The cheapest phone+broadband deal in the UK seems to be £10.50/month. I'm sure both the phone line and the dial-up access each used to cost more than that.
It's not a perfect market -- the cheapest phone-only deal seems to cost about the same. It's also not that easy to compare prices, when every company seems to offer it's own kind of deal. But there's lots of advertising trying to get people to switch.
I agree with your point about it being Anglo-centric.
Did you look at the list? The first one is in Arabic: (Just a redirect.), http:///./ probably won't work on Slashdot, so try http://xn--ggbla1c4e.xn--ngbc5... instead. .VERSICHERUNG is for the "German speaking insurance industry", .BERLIN is obvious, and there's a few in Russian, Chinese and Japanese.
Even now, if you have a domain name that's perfectly descriptive - say you're a business in Zambia - you're going to have more initial success with tompopcorn.com than you would with tompopcorn.co.zm , as people don't recognize '.zm'. See other comments about people ignoring the new TLDs the same way they would ignore a .cx domain (granted, part of that might be experience with some of the shadier sites that tend to choose .cx, .tk, etc.).
I don't know much about Zambia, but I'm sure Zambians recognise .zm. Only having a CCTLD is no barrier in most countries, or their neighbouring countries, which is what most businesses focus on. Search for .CX websites and there are plenty based on Christmas Island.
If I've forgotten the domain, I often guess .uk (.co.uk, .org.uk) as it's more likely to take me straight to the British website of a multinational, and less likely to take me to an identically-named company elsewhere in the Anglosphere.
Only if there's nothing else on the road. In China you also need driverless bikes, otherwise cars will still need to warn people (or ask them to get out of the way).
In Florence, some sort of regulation prevents most vehicles from driving round the narrow city-centre streets. The taxis, which were mostly electric or hybrid, had beepers, roughly as loud as a bicycle bell, to alert people or ask people to move. Much nicer than honking a horn.
Trains in Britain have two tones. They're usually used together (daa-DAA ), but sometimes I hear just the quieter one (I live near a busy line). I think the quieter one is only if the train is going slowly, perhaps to warn people maintaining the track. The two-tone sound is very distinctive -- I assume the frequencies are strictly regulated.
There's an entire series of videos of British train horns: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... I'm not sure whether to be surprised or amused.
(Which can't compete with the noise of an American train, which seems like it could wake up half a city.)
I hope you get paid a lot more than me, because I got pretty annoyed today that I ended up working four hours too many this week, and will have to make it up next week (I wanted to take this afternoon off, to make up for staying late because I was concentrating on Tuesday, but someone scheduled a meeting).
I'm supposed to be present between 10-12 and 14-15:30, work 36 hours a week, with no more than 8 hours under/over at the end of every month, and can take a day / am / pm off with permission a certain number of times per month. That's proper flexitime :D
I spend (36 - meetings etc) hours a week writing code, so I generally prefer not to develop software at home. But, occasionally it's satisfying to spend a rainy Sunday evening fiddling with something. I've noticed I'm much more likely to do this if I've had a lot of meetings in the preceeding week, or have recently returned from a holiday.
I do have a Github account (mostly little things I've forked), and the little green chart says I've committed changes on 12 days in the last 12 months.
It was an option on the desktop browser, there was a small button in the status bar. It occasionally popped up a prompt asking if I wanted to enable it (e.g. if I was using crap public wifi).
Opera 12 had a Linux version, and even (IIRC) FreeBSD.
Then Opera rewrote the browser, basing it on Webkit instead of their own engine, and the next version was only available for Linux and Mac.
I used it on Linux until last week, when I switched to Firefox.
I've still not got enough extensions set up, but Facebook and Google Mail now work 100% of the time. Under Opera 12, I was down to about 80% of the time -- I think Facebook and Google stopped testing a few months ago.
A much better article.
"The BBC understands it would take several years for any such technical proposal to be drafted."
It's an idea -- one listed among several in the document.
Visitor attraction + scientific research institution, 50% hits from UK, rest pretty much even across the rest of the world:
Main domain: 650k "visits" (Google Analytics definition) this month. 31% Chrome, 26% IE, 18% Safari, 17% Firefox, 3% Android.
60% Windows, 19% iOS, 13% Mac, 6% Android, 1% Linux.
Another domain of no interest to visitors, only scientists (and hobbyists, probably): 52k visits, 33% Chrome, 33% Firefox, 24% IE, 7% Safari, 2% Opera(!), 1% Android
85% Windows, 10% Mac, 2% iOS, 1% Linux (the site isn't very nice on a mobile, we don't think many people want to look at tables of data on a tiny screen).
Considering the two sources given are the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, it's safest to assume this is lies until someone finds a reliable source.
(Two newspapers that make their profitis by getting "middle Englanders" angry. )
The internet kind of has information on it. We'll actually bring you the latest as this story unfolds.
FTFY, kind of in the style of the actual summary.
(Apologies, kind of. Poor writing style actually annoys me.)
Last time I visited the Science Museum there were steam engines running. That was less than a year ago, but I don't think they run every day -- perhaps only at weekends.
The shipping gallery is available online: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.u... -- I don't know what is now in that location (or if it's ready yet). It's certainly not a gift shop, as that's on a different floor.
The Babbage difference engine model is in the Computing section, on the 2nd floor: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.u...
Perhaps you should have asked for a map?
(The museum is free, funded from tax and donations. The Deparment for Culture, Media and Sport is facing big cuts from the current government, and all the tax-funded museums are being told to cut costs as much as they can, and generate as much income as they can. I don't like this, but there's not much I can do about it.)
Exactly. My dad took me to model railway club for about a year. I didn't enjoy it much (I went because my mum said I had to choose one hobby to share with my dad, and the alternatives were worse). The interest I had in the model railway was the electronics. I would have liked to make a real signalling system, or automate the trains (which is a straightforward extension). However, the old men weren't interested, so the activity was mostly being bored while my dad drank beer and chatted about trains.
Nowadays, with the Internet, and with something like an Arduino or Raspberry Pi, I'd have been able to do something.
For the general case (any file), I've used this script:
#!/bin/sh
OUTF=rem-duplicates.sh;
echo "#! /bin/sh" > $OUTF;
find "$@" -type f -print0 |
xargs -0 -n1 md5sum |
sort --key=1,32 | uniq -w 32 -d --all-repeated=separate |
sed -r 's/^[0-9a-f]*( )*//;s/([^a-zA-Z0-9./_-])/\\\1/g;s/(.+)/#rm \1/' >> $OUTF;
chmod a+x $OUTF; ls -l $OUTF
It should be straightforward to change "md5sum" to some other key -- e.g. EXIF Date + some other EXIF fields.
(Also, isn't this really a question for superuser.com or similar?)
(Public key cryptography for credit cards)
I think you've more-or-less described the EMV standard, which is widely used pretty much everywhere except the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
I just bought some food by credit card, and the receipt says:
Visa Credit £6.34
[ICC] **** **** **** 3435
AID: A0000000013039
PAN SEQUENCE: 03
MERCHANT: **41872
AUTH CODE: 146972
PIN Verified
I have a smart card reader for validating online banking transactions, I think the administration and transport costs were probably more than the cost of the reader -- the bank sent it for free. The card has NFC, for low-value transactions (under £20, I think) I can pay contactlessly without a PIN. London is trialling accepting this for train/underground travel, it's already accepted for buses.
My card still has a magnetic strip, but I don't think it's ever been used.